Michael Poulsen leads Volbeat on Sunday at City National Grove of Anaheim, a venue twice the size of the houses it was playing on its previous tour. PHILIP COSORES, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Volbeat

Where: City National Grove of Anaheim

When: April 6

Among the first few dates of Volbeat’s fourth North American trek is another significant steppingstone in the success of the Scandinavian rock hybrid.

A year ago, the band rolled through Southern California with Canadian outfit Danko Jones for support and sold out the 1,000-capacity House of Blues Anaheim. Sunday night, the Danes doubled that amount: Touring in support of latest album Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies, they held court before a full crowd at City National Grove of Anaheim.

And with former Anthrax guitarist Rob Caggiano now in the fold, Volbeat’s unique meld of pomade-smooth metal came bolder than ever, equipped with a semi-truck’s worth of stage production.

Emerging to the fitting roar of Motörhead’s “Born to Raise Hell,” the quartet triumphantly met with a sea of devil horns pumping the air like pistons, and as the Western twang of “Doc Holiday” blared, fans began moving around in anticipation. Flashing lights and spectacle aside, Volbeat’s acquisition of Caggiano was quickly proven a major win via that track’s concisely dynamic leads, providing a punch more purely rock ’n’ roll than metal.

That’s the hard-rock gray area where this band thrives, and selections like “Hallelujah Goat” and “Guitar Gangsters and Cadillac Blood” remained the evening’s most impressive moments. Though the songs were written well before Caggiano’s addition, the tandem of his fretwork with that of frontman/guitarist Michael Poulsen masterfully wove together complementary styles, tastefully injecting some steel-string theatrics into already well-crafted songs.

“When we arrived today, there was some kind of church meeting going on here,” Poulsen mentioned. “Well, I am Reverend Michael, and I play the devil’s music.” That brief bit of banter segued into “Lola Montez,” another Outlaw Gentlemen choice and one of the night’s vocal highlights. Poulsen’s heaps of melody helped make an otherwise average cut something to pay attention to.

The crew’s missteps occurred whenever style combinations didn’t mesh, as on “16 Dollars,” lost somewhere between the leaner punk of Social Distortion’s Mommy’s Little Monster and the boom of Metallica’s self-titled Black Album. On record, it smacks of “George of the Jungle” percussion; live, it’s even more convoluted. “Maybellene I Hofteholder” is another cut that felt mostly like five minutes of killed time, a B-side at best. These are the sorts of things that sometimes bury Volbeat in the generic metal bin at Bionic Records.

“Reverend Michael was a little boy that listened to Johnny Cash,” Poulsen later pointed out, tossing in a snippet of “Ring of Fire” to make pressed-in fans go bananas. Volbeat’s strength is derived from such rootsy swagger, not menacing metal. Every standout at their Grove set said as much.

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